Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Defender for IoT comparison

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Microsoft Defender for IoT

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Helped 850,671 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Compliance Management (3rd)

Microsoft Defender for IoT

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

33rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IoT Security (5th), Operational Technology (OT) Security (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 6.4%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for IoT is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsoft Security Suite

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps

Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

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William Tuleja

Senior Endpoint Engineer at a university with 501-1,000 employees

Integration with existing tools boosts management efficiency

The only improvement I see is that some detection explanations are vaguely provided by Microsoft, resulting in generic IoT detections that alert me to an issue yet don't specify what's wrong. Often, it just links back to a generic KB article without additional information. When it happens, it requires extra detective work. This issue doesn't occur often but can be annoying.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps in improving our overall security posture. We have a nice overview of what is missing where and what can be improved."

"The dashboard is very good. It gives our clients a lot of information and allows them to have a complete overview of the system. Everything is visible in one glance."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitors our entire cloud environment. It enables conditional access and incorporates features like number matching and single sign-on for all our cloud apps. It is great for protecting against ransomware and various security threats."

"The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good."

"It's got a lot of great features."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."

"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"Mainly, it is manageable and integrates with other Microsoft products, which is crucial for me."

"It is manageable and integrates with other Microsoft products, which is crucial for me."

"The graphics and analysis in Microsoft Defender for IoT are very representative."

"I find Microsoft Defender very effective in vulnerability management and it provides good attack reduction, making it a next-generation protection solution."

"As a cybersecurity consultant, the best part of Microsoft Defender for IoT is the capability to integrate with other tools such as Microsoft Sentinel and receive real-time alerts from the product."

"I believe it is best suited for cloud services and is unmatched by other cloud security solutions."

Cons

"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."

"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."

"We haven't experienced issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for our company size of about five hundred people. However, I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."

"Defender could provide more in-depth visibility into vulnerabilities and services. For instance, we wanted to scan Azure NetApp for sensitive data, but they didn't have that feature. It was only for storage accounts. I want Azure Defender features to cover all Azure resources rather than a few."

"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."

"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."

"For improvements, I'd like to see more use cases integrated with Microsoft Sentinel and support for multi-cloud environments beyond just Azure."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a six out of 10 due to its lack of necessary features to operate as a standalone solution."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The only improvement I see is that some detection explanations are vaguely provided by Microsoft, resulting in generic IoT detections that alert me to an issue yet don't specify what's wrong."

"Customer service and support from Microsoft are costly. The execution by engineers is expensive, and the service is neither free nor toll-free, making it less accessible for customers."

"The only improvement I see is that some detection explanations are vaguely provided by Microsoft, resulting in generic IoT detections that alert me to an issue yet don't specify what's wrong."

"The documentation for Microsoft Defender for IoT is lacking. There are no clear steps or guidance, and updates are frequent, which adds to the confusion."

"Microsoft Defender for IoT is not scalable. If you want to monitor another industrial network, you need an additional server, making it less scalable."

"The primary area that needs improvement is compatibility with the latest IoT technologies."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."

"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."

"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."

"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Energy/Utilities Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The cost is generally reasonable. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Plan 2 costs $15 per server, per month. For a normal customer with ten to twenty servers, the cost is about $300 per month, which is a...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for IoT?

The solution is relatively expensive with licensing being based on each device. The cost per license might not be affordable for every organization, and I would rate it around six out of ten on a s...

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for IoT?

The primary area that needs improvement is compatibility with the latest IoT technologies. Microsoft needs flexibility to ensure good compatibility with new IoT solutions, which frequently introduc...

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for IoT?

My primary use case for Microsoft Defender for IoT is security. It helps with vulnerability management and provides significant attack reduction. It functions as a next-generation protection soluti...

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Compared 23% of the time

Azure Sphere vs Microsoft Defender for IoT

Compared 11% of the time

Dragos vs Microsoft Defender for IoT

Compared 7% of the time

Palo Alto Networks IoT Security vs Microsoft Defender for IoT

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for IoT Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

IoT Security

Download Microsoft Defender for IoT product report

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Azure Defender for IoT

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft Defender for IoT offers advanced security designed to protect IoT environments from sophisticated threats. Its deep integration with Azure reinforces security across devices and networks.

Microsoft Defender for IoT provides scalable threat detection and security intelligence tailored for IoT devices. Leveraging cloud-powered analytics, it ensures protection against emerging threats while supporting diverse device landscapes. The platform's compatibility with Azure Sentinel offers robust security operations and management capabilities.

What are the core features of Microsoft Defender for IoT?

Threat Intelligence: Provides real-time insights and threat detection using cloud-powered analytics.
Device Management: Simplifies the monitoring and management of IoT devices across networks.
Integrated Security: Seamlessly integrates with Azure Sentinel for comprehensive security operations.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Improved Security Posture: Strengthens the protection of IoT ecosystems against cyber threats.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces the complexities and costs associated with managing IoT security.
Scalability: Supports growth and adaptation to expanding IoT networks.

In manufacturing, Microsoft Defender for IoT aids in maintaining operational efficiency by preventing unauthorized access to industrial control systems. Healthcare providers utilize it to protect sensitive patient data transmitted through connected devices. Retailers benefit from secure management of inventory systems and customer data across smart devices.

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Information Not Available

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Microsoft Defender for IoT